Being ‘social’ with DLR and ESA

New concept: 'SpaceTweetup' becomes 'SocialSpace', now not only open to participants from all social media channels, but also engaging with new audiences including media, the blogosphere and a wider spectrum of those passionate about space.

Credit:
ESA/DLR.

Space Tweetups by the German Aerospace Center, DLR, and the European Space Agency ESA are becoming even more social. Originally conceived as real-life meetups of Twitter followers, they will now be open to participants from all social media channels, and thus called ‘SocialSpace’.

The purpose of this expansion is not simply to include more social media platforms, but also to broaden the agencies’ overall use of social media to engage with new audiences including media, the blogosphere and a wider spectrum of those passionate about space.

Our first joint European Spacetweetup, organised by DLR and ESA in 2011, was a memorable one, and the ripples from that first stone continue to spread far beyond the ‘Twittersphere’.

Since 2011, eight further European Space Tweetups have taken place throughout Europe – from Germany (Cologne, Berlin) to France (Toulouse, Paris) to Italy (Rome) to the Netherlands (Noordwijk), often as a joint effort by ESA and DLR or ESA and France’s CNES space agency.

Hundreds of participants have shared tens of thousands of tweets, images, videos and blog posts – millions of times with their followers – depicting behind-the-scenes, hands-on news and views on human space flight, science and exploration, missions and much more.

This community has gone on to create its own social media events, such as the SpaceUps in Belgium, France or Germany.

“In its diversity and variety of social media use, the digital society is a mirror of its real-life counterpart, hence we thought it was about time to open the Tweetup format to embrace more platforms and audiences,” says Marco Trovatello, head of DLR’s Crossmedia section.

Fulvio Drigani, ESA’s head of social media, adds “Social media channels are of increasing importance to ESA and national agencies like DLR and CNES because they enable us and our partners to interact more directly with our audiences. Most importantly, they help us to connect with you.”

Both agencies have broad social media presences - from Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ to many other platforms. The SocialSpace concept will help DLR, ESA and other cooperating partners like CNES to better connect with you.